 So since this is Children's Book Week, we're going to talk a lot about children's literature. So my first question for you is, what spurred your interest in comics and do you think graphic novels are making, how do you think graphic novels are making an impact in children's literature today? Where to begin? So hi, I'm Reina, I'm like, should we introduce ourselves or anything? Sure. So Reina. Okay. Feel free. I'm the author of the books Smile, Sisters, and Drama, and I illustrated the babysitters club graphic novels, and I have a book coming out this fall called Ghosts, which I'm really excited about, and I started reading comics when I was nine years old, and I was a San Franciscan, so that was thanks to the San Francisco Chronicle, and I fell in love with Calvin and Hobbes, and For Better, For Worse, and Foxtrot, and Peanuts, and I started drawing my own comics when I was 10, and then they were really bad, but I stuck with it, and I went to school in a New York city at a school called the School of Visual Arts, and they have a cartooning program there, so I got really into comics and making my own and making mini comics, and then, I mean, Jean and I met through mini comics once upon a time, because we used to do small press festivals together, and I've been making comics professionally since 2006, so it's my 10th year doing it, and it's really great, and the second part of the question was about impact. Yeah, how do you think graphic novels are making an impact today in children's literature instead of the funny papers? Right, well, instead of or alongside, I feel like the funny papers are still really important to me and the people who read them, and now people read comic strips online as well, so they've reached an even bigger audience than they used to, but, I mean, we've seen just a tidal wave in the last 10 years of interest and of amazing publishers who are stepping up to the plate to publish more and more graphic novels, so, I mean, 10 years ago, there were a few, the shelf was small, and now the shelf was enormous, and I feel like kids just can't get enough of them. Thank you. It's kind of awesome. I think Raina and I actually have very parallel stories. I think this is probably true of a lot of cartoonists roughly around our age. A lot of us grew up reading some form of comic books. I started reading comics when I was in fifth grade. I still remember the very first comic that my mom bought for me. It was a DC Comics Presents starring Superman in the Atomic Knights. You guys know who the Atomic Knights are? They're these dudes. They dress up in medieval armor and they ride around these giant mutated dogs. Kind of awesome. So that was the main character, like Superman and the Atomic Knights. Those were the main characters in this comic. That comic blew my mind. And after that, I started making comics. I think I was around 10, too. I used to make comics with my best friend in fifth grade, a guy named Jeremy Kenyoshi. So we would brainstorm stories together. I would do all the pencils. He would do all the inks. Then his mom would photocopy them for us at work. We would staple these photocopies together and sell them to our friends for 50 cents a piece. We made eight dollars. It was awesome. Jeremy's not a cartoonist anymore. He's actually a radiologist. Good for him, but I kept making comics. And I think when I was a kid, you know, when we were growing up, like Rayna mostly read comic strips, which I think were a little bit more diverse in terms of genre, if not in other ways, right, a little bit. But I read mostly comic books. And when I was a kid, really all you could find were superhero comics. I think one of the ways in which comics has impacted children's books and children's books has impacted comics is that now we actually have a diversity of different kinds of stories and comics and different kinds of characters. I think that's been absolutely amazing. Yes. And you guys both have done a really great job of showing that different representation of comics and not just doing superheroes, even though, Gene, you are writing for Superman currently. The new superman. I am, which is weird, right? Like my first comic was Superman and I'm actually writing for Superman. No pressure. It's a weird, it's a weird thing. And Rayna, you are you read the babysitters club series and now you have written for the babysitters club. So it does come full circle. I just found fan art that I did when I was 10 of the babysitters club. And like, it's amazing. It was it was incontinuity. Like Stacy had just moved to New York City, so Stacy's not in the lineup. So I posted it to my Instagram and everybody was like, where's Stacy? And I was like, it's not that I don't love Stacy. It's just that she wasn't there at the time. Yeah, it's really amazing. It was like cool to find that because I didn't remember doing it at all. So can I ask, like, did your designs for the characters change? Oh, really? So it was kind of even though you don't remember doing that art when you were 10, it was still somewhere in your subconscious. When I went back to read those books in order to adapt them. And this was happening in 2005. So this was 10 years ago. I mean, I hadn't read the babysitters club novels since I was maybe like 12 years old. But when I read them, it was like no time at all. I still saw them in my mind's eye in the exact same way, which is to say that I still saw them looking like me and my friends. So I drew Christie, like I draw myself. So now when people read Smile and the babysitters club, they're like, how come Christine Rayner, the same person? Is that actually you? And I'm like, not really. But she she was me in my head when I was that age. So it's it's very strange. That's awesome. So. You guys both have written a lot of things on like representing vast diversity of people in comics. Jean, you've done great things for Asian Americans in comics and writing different characters and protagonists with multifaceted things, not stereotypes. So that's something that you get into in American born Chinese, of course. And you've read the wrote the first gay character I read. I've read in a children's comic, which I think is great. And I think representation is a good thing to have in in comics in general. And can you talk about why representation in children's literature is important and how it's been different when you were kids versus now? Oh, it's definitely it's definitely different now than when we were kids. We kind of grew up roughly in the same area, too. I grew up in the South Bay, which is about an hour from here. And you grew up around here. I grew up in the city. Yeah. Yeah. So I really I kind of think like the Bay Area gets into you, you know, and it comes out in in these comics. For me, when I was a kid, I just remember that it was a really big deal to see an Asian American on TV. I remember like my brother and I would be watching. And then if some Chinese guy walked up on onto the screen, we'd like call our parents to come look. That's how that's how rare it was. We go, there's a Chinese guy there. And then you'd be like, where is it in the background? Look right there. And they'd be like, wow, you know, it was like a big deal. And and and I think I was felt like I always felt it. I always felt like I wanted to see characters who look like me and who look like my family in in these comics, even though I wasn't able to talk about it, that feeling was always there. So I do think for a lot of my books, that kind of drives it, you know, and it's not just seeing characters that look like me. It's seeing a world that looks like the one that I grew up in, the one, the one that I lived in, you know, and being from the Bay Area, you grow up around a lot of different kinds of people. And then when you start reading these books, you realize a lot of these different kinds of people don't make it into these stories. This sounds really weird, but I was the minority growing up here. And I mean, I went to Lowell High School, any low lights in the house? Yeah, all right. I love when pans grow up, class 95. And at the time, I think Lowell was 65 percent Chinese. And then I think white was like the next largest racial foot. I don't even know the right words to use anymore. But, you know, I was not I was not the majority. And so my friends did not represent the majority that you see in the rest of America. So when I moved away from San Francisco for the first time, I went out to the East Coast and I was in New York for school. I was like, this is really disconcerting. Why is everybody white here? I don't understand it. So so when I started making comics, I just I was really, really thoughtful to like make it look like it looked like I was growing up. I mean, my friends were every race and every orientation, and it was just what I saw and what I knew. And people told me I was being progressive and I was like, what are you talking about? It's just life and putting gay characters into a middle school setting and drama. It was just me and my friends, you know, that was just what I saw. That's what I knew. And so, I don't know. It's it's important to me to show what I know. And we're lucky here. It's true. There is a special place and we were all in it together and we we love that about it, but I don't know. I feel I feel like we're just that we're lucky. Yeah, I think we are. I think we are. I actually think that every kid should have an experience where you're a part of the majority and also an experience where you're a part of the minority, because I think I think both of those things together give you a more full picture of what it's like to grow up in these different environments. Yeah. So people are discovering your books every in libraries every day and they're seeing that representation. They're seeing themselves in their books. Could you name a book you discovered in the library when you were a kid and why it stuck with you? We're reading a book about Leif Erikson. There's a Viking. I do like a book report on him and I was just like, yeah, he's so cool. He like wears those like crisscross things on his legs. And he like, I don't know. I just remember being like really into Vikings when I was like seven. That's a terrible example, but it sticks out in my head. So does Leif Erikson represent you as a person? Absolutely, a hundred percent. Yes, I have my wooden boat and everything up in my apartment. Yeah. That's awesome. Wait, so are you going to do a Viking comic? Totally. That's the plan. It's as bright as the second Vikings. That's perfect. Sure. Totally. You heard of her first. When I was really little, my favorite book in the library was this one called Happy Birthday to You by Dr. Seuss. You guys know that? Do you know that book? I think you've talked about it. Yeah, I love that book. I loved it. I checked it out over and over and over again. And partially because I loved getting birthday presents, right? I was a greedy kid. But also there's this passage in the book where they talk about the terror of non-existence, which is it like blew my mind when I was a kid, right? He talks about how like you should be thankful that you're not a wasn't, that you're not, that you actually exist. And when I was a kid, I just remember looking at that page and being like kind of freaked out and thrilled all at the same time and that really stuck with me. Yeah, Dr. Seuss sticks with a lot of kids. My first book was Oh, The Places You'll Go. And that's one of those ones where it's like thinking broadly about how you're going to be when you. Yeah, that's one of those things where it's like underneath those primary colors is something really deep and really like gets to the core of what it means to be a human. OK, now I have a silly question. Jean, you write for superheroes and Raina, you've read in an X-Men comic. So if you were a superhero, what would your name be and what would your powers be? Oh, man. Do you have one? I'd be the weather girl. You totally thought of that before. I've thought of that before. Well, like when I first read about storm, I was like, no, like that's what I want to do, because I used to be obsessed with the weather. And maybe it's San Francisco thing where the weather just never changes. So when it does even a little bit, you're like, oh, my gosh, this is so exciting. Like, wow, it's raining. What a concept. But yeah, so I can't be stormed because storm already exists, but I think I'd be the weather girl. I also used to be obsessed with Pat McCormick. I feel like I'm in like my hometown, so I can talk about this. Pat McCormick used to be the weatherman for Fox 5 News. And he had like a puppet show also. He was just so I'd sit through the whole news just to get to the weather because I loved Pat McCormick so much. Yeah, so this is this is premeditated. Jean, I'm sorry to. Wow. Yeah, you totally tried to play it off like it was coming. You have thought about this since you were a kid. I was a kid. That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. I don't know. I think when I will, you know, those comics that I was doing with Jeremy, that that the the the character that we created for that comic is probably who we wanted to be when we were when we were 10 years old, you know. And the main character, his name was his name was Spade Hunter, which is not a great name. But the reason why we chose it was because we both really liked the shape of the spade in a deck of cards and the spade. Like so he so he wore a suit with like a spade on it. And then his he didn't really have any powers. He was kind of like Robin Hood. He wore all green. He lived in the woods. So the one thing that would that made him different from Robin Hood is that he had this discus of death. And that was his weapon. He throw it at people's heads. We thought it was awesome. And that was based on the swing that I had in my backyard back then. We had the circular swing that only had one one rope. Oh, I had one of those. You did. I don't think they make those anymore because kids cracked their heads on them. Like one of my friends actually cracked her head falling off of that thing on her backyard. Right. But that eventually fell off. And then my brother and I would used to throw it at each other as a discus of death. So I think that's that's who I wouldn't want to be. So no like radioactive spider bite or like how you came about your powers. Oh, well, yeah. If I had to get bitten by a radioactive animal, I would prefer that it would be a pterodactyl. Right. Yeah. Out of all the animals. Sure. Wings. I was supposed to spider. Spider is not as interesting as a pterodactyl. OK, so you guys have been working together or not working together, but fans of each other's work for a long time. What is your favorite book of Reina's and what is your favorite book of G? Fitness to the Test. My favorite book of Reina's is Sisters, I think. I think she gets better with each book personally. Thanks, Gene. And I think that that book is is pretty amazing. I have four kids. I have a boy and three daughters and my daughters, especially all of them, but my daughters especially are obsessed with Reina. They love Reina. They love Reina so much more than they love me. It feels so sad. Like when I ask them what they think of my books, they go, they always say the same thing. They always go, it's all right. It's not as good as Reina. It's all right. Are they in the audience right now, cheering her on? They're not. They're not. They're actually at a track meet. They really wanted to come, but they had to go to a track meet. They don't love me that much. Track meets are better. Your mom made them go to the track meet. They wanted to come here. It's really hard for me to choose a favorite Gene book. I mean, I started reading American Born Chinese when it was still mini comics. And I remember thinking like that I had reached the end of the story because I had read up to like the halfway point in the mini comics. And I was like, that was good. And then the book came out and I was like, oh, my gosh, like it just like there's so much more to it. And it was it was just so amazing. I mean, what a what a way to come out the gate swinging with American Born Chinese that that book is just astounding. If you guys have not read American Born Chinese yet. OK, yeah, so good. And I mean, I'm a huge, huge fan of Boxers and Saints, too. I just I can't believe the things you were able to do with that series. Did you call it a series or do you call it a set or that they had a fancy word for it? I forget. Die something. I forget. Yes. Oh, OK. That's what they called it. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Figured it out. I also really like Secret Coders, which I read pretty recently. And it was like, this is so much fun. I need and now I'm going to learn to code and I'm not a I'm not a numbers person. I'm not a techie person at all. But it kind of made me want to be one. Awesome. Awesome. And also, I mean, the Avatar comics, like I could just geek on forever about Jean's work. It's so good. We were both Avatar fans. Yeah. Yeah, not the movie. Not the movie. No, no, no, no. But the TV show. Yes. And Cora and Cora was amazing. Anyway, just geek out for 20 minutes about Avatar. Anything else that you guys are major fans of that you've become fans of recently, like cartoons, well, I'm a fan of Jason Shiga. We're friends. But I think I actually like him better as a cartoonist than I do as a friend. He's all right as a friend. He's an amazing cartoonist. That dude is like, so he did this book called Meanwhile, which all of you should read. Meanwhile is like a maze and a comic book had a baby. It's a choose your own adventure comic. Amazing book. And he also wrote a book called The Librarian, which I think is why a lot of library people would want to. Oh, Book Hunter. He did a book called Book Hunter. Yeah, which is great. Just like if you don't turn in your library, current books. The Book Hunter comes after you. The Book Hunter comes after you, so watch out. Jason is a superhuman. He's a superhuman being. I'm a big fan of The Hilda series by Luke Pearson, published by No Brow, Flying Eye Press. And they're these sort of like large format, almost French style. They're like 64 pages long, I think. But they're these little graphic novellas and Luke just puts so much beauty and wonder into his books. If you're a fan of Miyazaki's films at all, I recommend The Hilda series very strongly. I also just read Nimona by Noelle Stevenson and loved it. So good. Trying to steal your... CC Bell. CC Bell's El Defo. God, if you're a smile or a sister's fan, El Defo is an outstanding, outstanding book. It was the first graphic novel to be given a new very honor. And when that happened, I was just like crying tears of joy for CC, who's also a very good friend of mine. Great, thank you guys. So both of you guys have written like in Smile and in American Boy on Chinese about struggling to fit in. How many experiences or can you tell us about an experience about you struggling to fit in in middle school and high school, which is when your main books are? Just one. Just one. You can do a dozen if you want. Well, you know, a lot of the stuff in American Boy on Chinese was based on my childhood, especially my middle school years. I grew up, the community that I grew up is now like 60 or 70% Asian-American. When my family first moved in, we were just one of a handful of Asian-American families in there. And as I was growing up, the community changed, right? And I think that anytime you have rapid change like that, some stuff comes out. So when I was a junior high, there was a group of kids that we used to call the stoners. They wore heavy metal t-shirts. You guys know what that is? Heavy metal. It's like this music that we used to listen to before they invented rap. They would wear heavy metal t-shirts. Kind of simultaneous to rap. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was simultaneous to rap. But rap kind of overshadowed it. We called them head bangers. Yes, we called them head bangers. It was like men with long hair. They would wear women's makeup. It was kind of awesome. Anyways, so they would wear these heavy metal t-shirts. They'd wear ripped jeans. And I was hanging out with a small group of Asian-American boys at the time. And anytime we passed each other in the halls, my friends and these stoners, they would almost always yell something insensitive at us. So a lot of those words ended up in American-born Chinese. But what I realized looking back as an adult on those experiences is junior high was the very first time that I stopped feeling comfortable hanging out with my non-Asian classmates. And largely it was because I was internalizing these things that I was hearing in my, in the hallways. I remember wondering if everybody who was around me, who was an Asian, thought the way these stoners did. But the stoners were just the ones that were brave enough to say it out loud. Now as an adult I can look back and I can see that was just my middle school paranoia playing out but I do remember that was a big deal when I was growing up. I really tried hard to write about this experience and smile but I'm gonna pretend that none of you have read Smile and tell you what it's about. When I was a sixth grader at Aptus Middle School, I tripped and fell one evening and knocked out my two front permanent teeth and then had to spend four and a half years dealing with braces and surgery and head care. And this was in sixth grade. It was my first year at Aptus. Then I was a really shy kid to begin with and I was already kind of self-conscious and so losing my two front teeth kind of brought it to an extreme level that I don't think anyone should ever have to deal with. But I felt really isolated. People teased me, I got bullied for it and people were just really curious but I was a very sensitive kid and didn't know how to articulate what I was feeling and it took a long time for me to really get my self-confidence back and that did coincide with getting my teeth fixed in a lot of ways. And so that's kind of what the story ends up being about but the experience was brutal and I feel like every kid goes through something, maybe not as extreme as that but something that makes them feel like an outcast or something that makes them feel like they don't look the way everybody else does or they're not normal or something else. And I was shocked at how many people could relate to the story even if they haven't busted their face. They're like, oh my gosh, well I had this time everyone's had a time where something happened to them and being able to share that story with other people can really make you feel connected to others. So the thing that made me feel like the biggest outcast of all ended up being the thing that connected me to millions of people through the story. And I think that's really the power of books is being able to relate to other people and being able to empathize with others. And in the case of comics, it's just so personal somehow. It just feels like you are talking directly to the character or that you are the character. And maybe it's something about the art being sort of friendly and representative and it doesn't necessarily look like a real person. Like in American Born Chinese, your characters are very cartoony and so you can easily see yourself in any of them. And I think readers can see themselves in my characters for the same reason. So there's just this, when you're watching a movie, you're seeing an actor play a role or when you're reading a book with just words, you're imagining it in your head but something about comics just brings you right there. So yeah, I'm getting way off topic, but it's been sort of a brilliant revelation to realize the power of storytelling through this medium as a result of this horrible experience I had when I was 11. I don't think it's off topic at all because people can see themselves and work through their struggle with fitting in with books and with your books in particular. Do you guys have any books that helped you through a hard time recently? Whether it be struggling to fit in or just something that you're like, oh, I can relate to this. I see myself in this character. Recently or just in our lives. I mean, honestly, I work through my own stuff in my books. I'm always working through whatever it is that I'm dealing with through my work. I remember reading when I was younger for better or for worse in particular, which is a comic strip by Lynn Johnston that's no longer being syndicated, but it was syndicated from 1979 until 29 years later, what's the math there? Yeah, none of us knew how to add, but it was a long time and it was during my adolescence. So I felt like I had these characters that I could see every single day in the comic strip pages and they were going through the same stuff as I was and it just taught me that it was okay. Whatever it was I was experiencing, I was not alone and it was okay. And that was hugely important to me. And I still credit Lynn Johnston as my biggest influence for that reason. She was writing about real people, real lives, real problems. It helped me through so, so, so many things from the time I was a kid until the time I was a grown-up. I mean, I grew up reading superhero comics. So I think that had a huge impact on the way I think about the world. I do think there's something about superheroes, especially the ones that wear like some kind of a mask or that mask allows you to imagine yourself inside of that suit, you know, especially like Spider-Man's, anybody could be under that Spider-Man suit. And the fact that behind every superhero are these two ideas. Number one is you always put others before yourself. And number two is you never give up. No matter how bad you're getting beat down by Dr. Octopus, you just keep on going. And I think those two ideas really embedded themselves inside of me through me reading these superhero comics. So what is a book that you really loved reading recently? What's your last favorite read book? I do a lot of reading to my kids, you know, and I could tell you the one that we have to return to over and over and over again, the few, because that's what little kids especially like to do, right? They like to read the same book over and over again. There's one called Little Pea that my youngest daughter just loves. It's the author's Amy Krause. I don't remember the illustrator's name, but it's an amazing book. It's about in the world of peas, like these little talking peas, like green peas. Okay, there's a mama pea and a papa pea and a little baby pea. What they have to eat for dinner is candy. And Little Pea hates eating candy. So her parents forced her to eat candy in order to get her dessert. And her dessert, of course, is spinach. So that's been, I've read that book so many times to my daughter. My oldest son, when he was around that age, the book that he loved was Dayglo Brothers, by, I think his name is Christopher Pike. And it's about, it's a nonfiction book. My older son is like the exact opposite of me. All he reads is nonfiction. And when I was a kid, all I read was like fantasy and superhero stuff, you know? So I don't totally get, like he looks like me, but his reading habits are the exact opposite. Anyways, Dayglo Brothers, it's actually a nonfiction book about these two brothers who invent the Dayglo colors. And it talks about how they invented them, how the Dayglo colors helped the allies win the war. It was like, it's an amazing book. Done in this beautiful, like 1950s inspired style with all these Dayglo colors weaved in. Wonderful book. I feel like I'm really behind the curve here. A lot of you are gonna laugh at me for this, but I really only recently started to appreciate Moe Willems' work. I mean, I've known Moe actually for a while now, but I didn't have any kids in my life. I don't have kids myself and I don't have a lot of young cousins or anything like that. So I only just recently started reading his work and part of it is because I have a friend who's got a six month old. So I'll go visit my friend and she's like, hey, I wanna go do another grown-up thing. Can you entertain the baby for a few minutes here? Here's some Moe Willems books to read. So we'll start reading the pigeon books and I'll start doing the voices. And I'll notice that my friends stop doing what they're doing and they'll come and like sit and like listen to me read the books. And it's just the most fun experience ever to read the pigeon and to go through the pigeons and motions with. And the kid is just like, like she's six months but she's just like fascinated by everything. Which I don't know, Moe Willems is just a genius and I just was in New York and got to see his show which is at the New York Historical Society and it's sort of a retrospective of his career and it's amazing. And as far as graphic novels goes, I have been a fan for a long time of Svetlana Tchmikova's work but she recently published a book called Awkward and it's a middle school graphic novel about these kids who were like in a science competition and she is just a brilliant cartoonist. She's so, so good at nailing jokes. And I think for me, like if a graphic novel is not funny, I'm not gonna be that interested in it. I want funny graphic novels. I want them to be entertaining and poignant and sad and emotional but I want them to be hilarious as well. So awkward also if you haven't read this book. It's so good. I see the comic experience in all of your works too. You always have this comic relief family with the expressions on people's faces. You have to laugh. I've read a lot of comics. And I think the more comics you read, the more you realize what makes you laugh and then you try to go for that in your own work. And I became a fan of manga maybe like 10 or 15 years ago and I think that really influenced my storytelling as well. They just go to some bonkers places with their facial expressions and they kind of have their own visual language in Japan that they've been honing for the past, I don't know four or five decades and it's just outrageous and it's just so funny. Another thing I'm really a huge fan of is Yotsuba by Kiyohiku Ozuma. That's like my favorite series and it's about this little kid. And she's weird. That is the elevator pitch but it's so, so, so funny. It feels like I'm reading Calvin and Hobbes again for the first time when I read Yotsuba. Y-O-T-S-U-B-A, did I get that right? Okay, for those of you who are like, wait, what? What? Yotsuba. And they're available in the Children's Center now. If you guys make your way up there, you can check them out. She has green hair. I mean, that's all, yeah. There's flowers in the covers and, yeah, okay. So why are books for kids important? Why do you write books for kids and young adults? Well, I think, I don't know if this is true for you but when I was doing my comics I wasn't really thinking about age demographics. Especially when you're doing mini comics, you're just doing mini comics, you don't really, like you just hope that you can get 16 people to read your comic, you know? I didn't get categorized as young adult until after I signed with my current publisher for second books. And retro, you know, retro act, like looking back at it, that's what I'm trying to say. Looking back at it, I do think that's a great fit for me. I think there's something about coming of age stories, there's something about that formation of identity that I find fascinating and that I return to over and over again. I think I'm just stuck being 11. Think in my head, I'm still in middle school, I'm still like annoyed with the thing that, you know, my locker is like not opening right. Like I just, I spend way too much time thinking about how I felt when I was 11 and the things that happened to me when I was that age and the friends I had and, you know, the experiences that I had but, yeah, I don't know. And I think most of what I like to read skews young as well. And I'm at the kids' table perpetually, like when I go to parties, I'm like, oh, grownups, whatever. And then the kids are there and I'm like, hey, what are you guys doing over here? Like I just, I would just rather hang out with the kids most of the time. So that's not why they're important though. I think I got way off topic. That's why I write them. But I think that it's important for somebody to be at the kids' table. I think that we as adults do have retrospective wisdom or something, maybe, I don't know, hopefully. And the connections that adults and kids make together through books is a wonderful thing. And I like seeing parents and their kids share my books. I like seeing that they cross generations and that they start conversations between generations because I think that's really important. And it's all to reassure my 11 year old self that it's gonna be okay. So that's my goal through my work, is to tell myself 20 years ago, 30 years ago, whatever, that it's all gonna be okay. All right. Now you guys have to ask each other questions because I ran out of questions. No. So Jean. So our summer learning event starts today in case you guys didn't know, they're wearing our Reading Ranger badges. You can get one yourself. If you read 15 hours this summer and you can sign up upstairs in the Children's Center at your local library, wherever that may be, hopefully in San Francisco because that's where the Reading Ranger badges are. So if you had, do you have any books that you would want to recommend? I know you keep mentioning books, but you have to mention more. Do you have any books that you would recommend that people go upstairs and grab to start their summer reading and get the Reading Ranger badge? Well, when I was a kid, I loved the Book of Three series by Lloyd Alexander, which is still fairly popular. Amazing fantasy series. I don't know if I really liked fantasy that much before I read that series. I'll just tell you my favorite books when I was a kid. I really, really loved Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of Nim by Robert C. O'Brien, Newberry Winner, such a fantastic book. Well, well, well written. My other favorite book when I was a kid was called In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, which is about a girl who moves from China with her family to Brooklyn in the 1950s when Jackie Robinson's career, wait, 50s or 40s, whenever Jackie Robinson was first playing for the Dodgers. And so she sort of gets assimilated into American culture by learning how to play stickball and learning about baseball and everything. And it's been one of my favorite books since I was eight or nine years old. So if I could have a dream project, it might be to adapt that into a graphic novel, but we'll see, we'll see. All right, now we're gonna open up the floor to questions. Does anyone have questions for Jean and Reina?